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The War's Need of Christ 

A PALM SUNDAY SERMON 

hy 

Shepherd Knapp 



The War's Need of Christ 



A PALM SUNDAY SERMON 

by 

Shepherd Knapp 



1917 

The W. B. Crombik Company 

Worcester. Mass. 






Worcester, Mass., 

April 3, 1917. 

Rev. Shepherd Knapiv D.D. 

8 Institute Road, Worcester, Mass. 

My dear Dr. Knapp: 

We were so impressed with your sermon last Sunday that we 
feel it ought to be printed as a companion to the one which you 
gave a few Sundays ago, which was put in print. 

We should be very glad to take our part in having last Sunday's 
sermon printed, if agreeable to you. 

Very truly yours. 

Arthur D. Butterfield, 
Charles F. Fuller, 
Clinton Alvord. 



The War's Need of Christ 

I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the 
stones would immediately cry out. — Luke 19: 40. 

If on this first Sunday of April in the year nineteen hundred and 
seventeen, when America stands on the very threshold of such 
momentous decisions and events, some people should object that 
it is inappropriate for the Christian churches to emphasize, as in 
other years, the distinctly religious interests of the week which 
leads up to Easter and includes Good Friday, answer might well 
be made to them in the very words of this text.* 

To-day the Christian churches are announcing to the world, 
" This is the beginning of our Holy Week : this, men, women, 
children, everywhere, is the week for thinking with special 
earnestness of Jesus Christ, the memory of whose death and 
passion makes this week holy, — Jesus Christ, the bringer of the 
gospel ; Jesus Christ, the revealer of the heart of God ; Jesus Christ, 
the Saviour of the world. Come, one and all, into closer, surer, 
fuller fellowship with him this week than you have ever known 
before. With heart and mind and will declare that he is the power 
of God on earth, to save and complete the life of man." 

Should Holy Week Be Ignored This Year? 

But while the churches of Christ are thus speaking, there are 
some Americans, even in the churches themselves, who say or 
think, "That is no message for such a time as this. In other, 
ordinary years of the world's history it was right enough to draw 
men into communion with the loving spirit of Jesus Christ, at the 
time which commemorates his final act of perfect love for man ; 
but to-day, with the whole world in the grip of war ; with Christ's 



Tor printing, the introduction to the sermon has been abbreviated, 

3 



law of love held in obeyance, or denied and trampled on, over so 
wide an area, among so many men ; with the deadliest conflict that 
the world has ever known going on in France, in Russia, and on 
the sea ; with our own nation deciding, this very week, what part 
it must take in these bloody battles — Holy Week spent in a council 
of war ; is there not something grimly preposterous in calling men 
to special religious observances at such a time, in urging the world 
at such a time to turn its face with one accord toward Jesus Christ ?" 
As, on the first Palm Sunday long ago, some of the bystanders 
were displeased at the public demonstration which was being made 
in Jesus' name, and called on him to rebuke his disciples for their 
misplaced enthusiasm, so to-day I can imagine some hard-headed 
men among the world's respected citizens, lifting their eyes toward 
heaven in impatient protest at the proposal to spend a whole 
week, at such a time as this, in urging that the greatest need of 
the world to-day is Jesus Christ. "Father," I can hear them 
saying, " rebuke thy over-zealous servants." 

Back to them, as formerly to those others, comes the instant 
answer, "I tell you, if these should hold their peace, the very 
stones would cry out." The very conditions of the world to-day, 
which make Christ seem like a stranger here, are themselves 
indisputable evidence of the world's utter need of him. If Christ's 
own disciples should, indeed, fail at this time to place him in the 
very forefront of the world's thought ; if, influenced by the feeling 
that the times are out of tune with him, they should subside into 
silence, and should desist from the attempt to make him supreme 
in this warring and suffering world, would not this warring and 
suffering world itself cry out its need of him ? When, therefore, 
the world is in agony for the need of Christ, shall not Christians — 
then of all times — urge him upon mankind as the Saviour of human 
life, the power of God to free men from their sins and follies and 
to keep them from despair in sorrow, pain, and death ? 

1. Christ as the Ruler of Human Passions. 

Think, first of all, of the need of Christ to counteract the 
gathering bitterness and hate which this War has already created 
in the hearts of the belligerent peoples, and is now rapidly 
intensifying every day. 



In Belgium. 

When you read, for instance, the first-hand reports of the 
experiences of the Belgian people under the iron heel of Germany, 
stript of their possessions, cut-off from all news of those who are 
fighting for them against their conquerors, forbidden so much as 
to speak of king or country, and forced at every turn to see, and 
obey, and salute their persecutors, — what do you suppose is to 
keep them from being consumed by hate — their own spirits burned 
up in the fire of it — except the religion of Jesus Christ, the religion 
of that brave cardinal of theirs, who loves God as truly as he loves 
Belgium ? 

In Germany. 

Or, when you realize that the whole German people, shut in 
behind that impenetrable wall of censorship, are taught to believe 
that this War is to be laid entirely at the door of Britain, and that 
Britain, in her modes of warfare, is like a savage beast ; for it is 
evident, from all the information we can get, that the mass of the 
German people have been effectively taught to regard the blockade 
of Germany by Britain's navy, and the consequent threat of 
starvation, as a much more fundamental iniquity than Germany's 
own submarine campaign — when you realize this, and learn that 
even the Christian preachers of Germany — some of them — are 
preaching from their pulpits the doctrine of implacable severity, 
do you not groan within you at the thought of this winning over 
of a whole great people to the passion of hate ? Can Christianity 
afford to sleep or to take a holiday, in the face of the need of such 
a work of regeneration as awaits her there ? 



In France. 

And what of France, what of the soldiers and people of France, 
as they enter that reconquered strip of soil, but now evacuated by 
their invaders? There, in that shell-wrecked fragment of their 
sunny land, when they find, not only the inevitable havoc of 
modern warfare, but the savage and pitiless destruction of an 



enemy who has cared for nothing save to make himself feared, 
what are the passions that will flame up in the breast of returning 
France? Can any one with human instincts blame them, if they 
see blood ? But what shall be the consequence of this ? When 
France has thrust the enemy at last beyond her borders, and finds 
herself on German soil, shall she exact her pound of flesh ? Shall 
she herself do there the same deeds, for which on her own soil 
she has declared her foe accursed? Shall France, that gallant 
nation, which has shamed us for our former thought of her as a 
shallow, scoffing, pleasure-seeking people — shall France, swept 
away by the passion of revenge, drag her honor in the mud beyond 
the Rhine ? God forbid ! Christ forbid ! And how shall Christ 
forbid, save through the living, active, unfailing, unresting power 
of his religion in the world, knocking without cessation at the 
hearts of men ? 



2. Christ to the Rescue of the War's Victims. 

Think, in the second place, of what a wealth of Christian love 
is needed in order to arouse enough benevolence to meet and relieve 
the unprecedented mass of human misery in the world to-day, created 
by this War. Surely we have all realized by this time that, much 
as we have heard and read and thought about it, we are as yet 
beholding it all from afar off. We hear some pitiful tale, from 
Armenia, or Belgium, or Persia, and we say, " This is far worse than 
we had imagined ; this is almost too horrible to listen to ; it would 
be altogether too horrible, were it not that, in response, we can give 
something to help relieve the suffering." 

Then we make a gift, or we adopt a plan for making repeated 
gifts of certain designated sums : and then, after that, when we 
read in the papers that the hunger in Turkey or Poland is greater 
than ever ; or when the reports reveal the fact that some new 
nation is starving, like Greece, for instance, held in duress by the 
Allies, and whipt into obedience with the whip of hunger ; or that 
the beginnings of scarceness have reached still farther a field, as in 
Spain or Sweden, we say, " This is indeed terrible, but I am already 
doing something toward feeding the world's hungry, and clothing 
the world's naked," and on the strength of that, we do not deem 



it necessary to feel too keenly these new appeals to human charity. 
We do not let ourselves realize in a definite practical way that for 
each man or woman or child who is hungry, hunger means hunger, 
emptiness of stomach, wasting of body, loss of vitality and of 
resistance to disease. We do not let ourselves realize that for the 
latest victims, as well as for those whose misery first awakened our 
sympathy, cold means cold, sickness means sickness, despair 
means despair ; that the latest reports of want and suffering and 
death, though they have lost much of their news value for the 
papers, and no longer claim the big head-lines and the front-page 
columns, are nevertheless just as much the want and suffering and 
death of actual individual people as they were at first. 



What Is to Be Done about it? 

Are we to be blamed because our imagination grows thus 
sluggish in responding to the hundred-times-repeated story of 
destitution, because, after giving sums which, three years ago, 
we should have conceived to be beyond the realm of possibility, 
we are slow in deciding that we must manage somehow to give 
even more, and to keep on giving? I do not believe that God 
himself is regarding us from that point of view. It is no longer 
a mere question of blame or praise in this utterly abnormal state 
of things in which the world of men finds itself today; it is just 
a question of how to get the thing done, which must somehow be 
done, how to arouse our jaded sympathies to a still greater 
intensity, how to make the channels of benevolence flow still 
broader and fuller and further. 

What power is going to accomplish this hereculean task? 
What power is equal to this, except the power of Jesus Christ, 
which has already given to the world, at many turning-points of 
its history, blessings that had seemed completely out of reach, 
power for good that no one had believed available ? That is 
the force which must now be drawn upon anew. That, just that, 
is what you and I need today, as we need nothing else, to enable 
us to do that for which the world holds out to us appealing 
hands. We need to apprehend, for the first time, "the breadth 
and length and height and depth of the love of Christ." Oh, for 



the sake of the world's misery, that all the hungry may be fed, 
and all the cold and naked given clothes and shelter, and all the 
orphans cared for, and all the blind men saved from the despair 
of darkness, and all the sick and wounded nursed to health, or 
eased in dying — for this, must the Christian churches preach 
their Christ with new faith and passion, the message of that great 
love — which gave generously, shall we say, and worked tirelessly 
for men ? — oh, far beyond that, which made the greatest sacrifice 
of all on their behalf, and died for them on Calvary. 



3. Christ as America's Leader in the War. 

Think, finally, of the need for Jesus Christ of us Americans, 
who now stand, ourselves, on the very brink of the War, and who 
look at that hideous conflict as one to which our nation, our 
people, our lives and fortunes, may tomorrow be committed. 
Was there ever a time in our history when we needed Jesus 
Christ as we do for the period extending from to-day to the day 
when this war comes to its final end, to keep us, as a nation, 
clean, just, patient, merciful, singleminded in the pursuit of 
righteousness, while we do our part in a War in which all the 
passions of the human heart, lowest and highest intermingled, are 
fiercely active ? 



The War's Conflict of Good and Evil Forces. 

We cannot forget, we have no right to forget, that the motives 
and causes of this war, with the Allies as well as with the Central 
Powers, have their deepest roots in the old pagan notions of 
national and international life, which have always produced hate 
and war, and always will, as long as nations are guided by them. 
The nobler ideals and purposes, which the War has called forth, 
which have done so much to defend and further it and lift it up, 
cannot disguise the fact that this War itself is the corrupt fruit 
of an evil tree. 

Nor dare we lose sight of the fact that in almost all the warring 
nations there are influential bodies of men — wholly dominant in 



Germany, it would appear ; only partly so in the nations of the 
Allies— who purpose that the result of the War, if their side 
wins, shall not be merely the ending of the menace of future 
wars and reparation for the invasions and atrocity of this one, 
but also the further enrichment of their own nation at the expense 
of others. China knows this well enough, and we have the hu- 
miliating spectacle of that pagan nation casting in her lot with 
half of Christian Europe, in order that, when peace comes, she 
may be one its negotiators, instead of a part of the spoils 
which it divides. 

It is a War with this intermixture of existing and threatened 
evil, that we are being drawn into, as well as a War which resists 
the policy of murder by submarine, champions invaded Belgium 
and massacred Armenia, and fights the cause of democracy against 
tyranny and militarism. 

Shall we, when we are in the War, be able to pursue only the 
good in it, and eschew the evil? Shall we be able to keep our 
motives pure, our passions noble, our hands clean ? When the 
die for America has been cast, and the crisis brings together in 
our national cause all who are loyal to America, whatever their 
ideal for America may be, whether high or low, whatever their 
standard of national and international morality, will the nobler 
element in American life be able then, in the heat and strain of 
war, to guide, and check, and use for its own higher purpose the 
lower elements? 



Christianity Can Keep Us True. 

It seems a task almost beyond the power of human nature. It 
is beyond the power of human nature. No power of man alone 
can possibly achieve it. America, if she would succeed in this, 
must seize, for use in this hour of her critical necessity, the power 
of God. And that power of God, made available for actual human 
use, is Jesus Christ— the principles, the ideals, the guiding laws 
of his religion. Do we know this well enough, can we be made 
to know it well enough, can the belief that Christ is right, and 
that he has the power to enforce the right, be driven deep enough 
into the heart, the mind, the conscience, the will of us Americans, 



to give him the victory in this new epoch of our nation's life on 
which we are about to enter? 

When to-day and repeatedly in the months to come we in this 
place sing "America", may this be to us not merely an act of 
patriotism, but a token that we are striving with all our souls to 
consecrate our patriotism and the land we love by the power of 
our religion. When we sing of that "freedom" which is the 
burden of our national hymn, freedom which resounds "from 
every mountain side," whose song rings sweetly " from the trees," 
and in whose praise "the rocks their silence break" — yes, the 
very stones cry out — freedom, whose " holy light " we pray " our 
father's God" to pour upon our land, may we not merely be 
remembering America's freedom from old oppressions, freedom 
from outward invasion and inward tyranny, but be praying and 
seeking on our land's behalf for freedom from evil passion, 
freedom from evil purpose, freedom from evil action, the freedom 
of righteousness and truth and love. 



.PR 2:) 1917 



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